Hands balled into fists

Wednesday 15th May, 2024

The SLFP is embroiled in a legal mess again, with the Sirisena faction and its rivals obtaining enjoining orders against each other at a rate. It however is no stranger to internecine internal clashes, which have plagued it for the past four decades or so. Even the members of the Bandaranaike family fought among themselves, and their clashes got down and dirty.

The latest legal battle over the SLFP leadership has taken a dramatic turn. Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who has been prevented by a Colombo District Court (CDC) interim injunction from functioning as the SLFP’s Acting Chairman, has been elected SLFP Chairman; the Kaduwela District Court (KDC) has issued an enjoining order preventing others from obstructing him. Former President Maithripala Sirisena, who has been debarred by the CDC through an interim injunction from functioning as the SLFP Chairman, stepped down the other day, paving the way for Wijeyadasa’s election to the top post.

Interestingly, Chandrika, who once had the public believe that Sirisena was fit to rule the country and even led his presidential election campaign from the front to ensure his elevation to the highest position in the land, now says he is not even capable of leading a political party; she thinks Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva is better suited to the task of running the SLFP. Sirisena had no qualms about enlisting the backing of the UNP to become the President in 2015, and going so far as to ruin the SLFP-led UPFA’s prospects of winning a general election in that year to enable the UNP to form a government with Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister. He is now accusing Chandrika and her loyalists of trying to hitch the SLFP to President Wickremesinghe’s wagon. Both warring factions are lucky that the SLFP’s rank and file have not kicked them out for their duplicity and treachery.

Chandrika now has another problem to contend with; Wijeyadasa is blocking her path. Her loyalists in the SLFP have refused to accept Wijeyadasa’s election as the party leader, but they cannot prevent him from functioning in that position, at least in the short run, owing to the KDC enjoining order. How they will seek to overcome this legal hurdle and continue with their campaign to take over the party remains to be seen.

If there had been even a slight chance of the SLFP being able to improve its electoral performance and savour power again, Sirisena would never have handed over the reins of the party to Wijeyadasa or anyone else for that matter; he would have stuck to the party’s chairmanship like a limpet. Court cases that some SLFPers have filed against him are perhaps the least of his problems. He knows that he cannot live down his failure as President from 2015 to 2019, much less wish away the intensification of the Catholic Church’s campaign to have justice served for the victims of the Easter Sunday terror attacks, which he failed to prevent.

Some Sri Lankans throw out crowbars, etc., during thunderstorms by way of protection against lightning. Amidst a raging political tempest replete with blinding streaks of lightning and deafening peals of thunder, Sirisena has given Wijeyadasa the so-called crowbar treatment. The ire of the Chandrika faction will now be directed at Wijeyadasa.

It is being argued in some quarters that the involvement of an incumbent Justice Minister in a legal battle over a political dispute gives rise to a conflict of interest, which has the potential to diminish the integrity of the legal and judicial processes, and the remedy is for him or her to relinquish the justice portfolio. If Dr. Rajapakshe is driven by principle and not expediency, as he claims, he will have no difficulty in heeding the aforesaid concern, and acting accordingly.